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| Cornell Plantations Dec 28 2013 |
Universals are tricky. It's something that is true in every situation, any time, any where. I'm not sure there are many universals. Most have counter facts or counter arguments that seem to disprove them. But, I am much more confident about "more or less universals." This is surer ground, for many things seem more or less to be true, most of the time.
What I have been playing with is the notion that to get to the inner, you start with the outer. To get to the "spirit" you start with the "law." Only when you have mastered the seeming constriction of "law" do you begin to enjoy the freedom of "spirit."
Test it out. How about car driving? When I drive nowadays I have a certain freedom about the activity. But it wasn't always so. I remember the agony of trying to find the biting point between clutch and accelerator, and the weird way a car seems to steer by itself, and learning emergency stops, clutch control on hills, three-point turns (K-turns in USA), reverse parking, using the rear-view mirror, judging distances to stop, and overtaking. That's the outer stuff of car driving—the law. It's only when you have all that down that you move to the inner, the spirit of driving.
How about playing a musical instrument? Scales, scales and more scales, then melody, then scales, then harmony, then scales, some rhythm, and more scales. Much early musicianship is learning the "law." Then you watch a talented musician—so easy, so free. Seems like there is nothing of "law" about it. Yet, it's only the long time spent with the outer that allows the musician to move beyond the outer to the inner, to find freedom in the music. The "law" of music does not go away. It is always there, but when internalized it gives the musician freedom to work within, and around, and to play with it. We only know and delight in a "blue note" because all the other notes are not "blue notes."
Is a home the walls, and ceilings, and doors and windows? Or is a home what happens inside the walls? Is a home the inner space created by the outer building? It is of course both. The outer creates the inner.
To find spiritual freedom, then, if "outer first, then inner" is a "more or less universal" it seems we need to learn the outer forms, the boundaries, the basics, the nuts and bolts of spiritual practice. That is, to so internalize them that they recede into the background as we move to the inner.
But, you can't jump to the inner without the framework of the outer. I suspect that is a mistake many of us make. You see the freedom of a spiritual adept and it looks so natural, so easy, so non-legalistic. Try to imitate that without the years of daily practice and it will prove illusive.
Equally to stay with the outer and never to move to the inner is only half a journey, and not the greater part. Recently, my teacher Dr. Jesse Tsao looked at my taiji form. He told me that I just about have the outer form, and that now it was time to concentrate on the inner energy. I have heard that in taiji the outer is only ten percent, while the inner is ninety percent. Master Tsao has been my teacher for four years. I have practiced taiji daily for at least an hour during that four years, and I might just have completed the outer form. By my reckoning, if four years is ten percent, then I have another thirty-six years of exploring the inner. I should have started younger! Yet, I do not expect to move beyond the outer in the sense of leaving it behind. I expect to explore the inner depths of the form and its energy.
I began consciously my spiritual journey in March 1973, forty years ago. It makes you think.
Spiritually, as I approach 2014, it is time to focus on the inner.
+Ab. Andy